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I rock my 200mm to compensate for the [PHOTO]

All photos are welcome, though most people post with the intention of receiving criticism so that they can become better photographers. Please do not spoiler your photos as that defeats the purpose of the thread.

For photography newbies:What type of camera should I buy?
This can't be answered the same for every person. There's little difference in the photo quality between most major brands (Canon, Nikon, etc) so it comes down to price and personal preference. Make sure your camera lets you control settings like shutter speed, aperture, and ISO and preferably lets you capture images in RAW format. Other than that, get a bit of hands on time and see how the camera feels to you. Also remember that if you're buying an SLR, camera bodies come and go but lenses usually last while. For this reason it might be worth it to buy a cheaper body and spend a bit extra on some lenses.

Speaking of lenses, which ones should I buy?
Most kit lenses are a good starting place, though you'll begin to find them more limited once you're more comfortable with your camera. A good entry level prime lens for Canon cameras is this little guy. Other than that, you'll probably want to pick up a telezoom lens with a macro feature. This should get you set for a long while.

Any good books/sites I should read?
Lots of people recommend Understanding Exposure or the first Ansel Adams book. Don't bother buying any book that tells you how to use your specific camera model. All of that information can be found in your user's manual.

How do I become awesome at arting?
The best advice I can give is: keep taking pictures. That being said, don't just randomly point your camera at something and hit the shutter button. Stop for a moment to think about why you're taking this picture. What are you trying to show people? Is the current lighting/angle/etc going to help you show that? If so, proceed. If not, adjust your settings or body to capture it another way.

Resources/Tools:Lightroom - Awesome software for managing your photo collection and editing RAW files.LR Mogrify - Unfortunately Lightroom doesn't have a border option so use this tool. It also does watermarks and the like.Canon Firmware Update - Unofficial firmware update that allows more options one some Canon cameras.Strobist - Fantastic source on getting into off camera lighting. Don't be put off by initial complexities. It'll come.Flickr - A free photo hosting site. Also has a pro option if you like. There's also a PA flickr group.Phorumr - If you're using flickr and Firefox, this script auto generates the code you need to paste into the forum.Photoshop Pyramid - Helps regulate your daily dose of Photoshop.A DIY plexiglass frame - Nifty.DIY Bokeh - A neat DIY to getting bokeh shapes.

Prime Lens - A lens with no “zoom.” While this might limit composition choices, it also usually means the lens is “faster” (meaning can achieve larger apertures, usually 2.8 and larger (2.0, 1.8, 1.4, 1.0, etc). The wider the aperture, the more light gets in and therefore the faster the shutter can be which is why primes are considered faster.

Zoom Lens - Any lens that can span a range of focal lengths. For example: 18mm-55mm. There are zooms in every category (normal, telephoto, wide, and macro).

Telephoto Lens - A lens that makes objects in the photo appear larger than they were to the naked eye. This is akin to being “zoomed in.” These lenses are comparable to physically moving closer to the subject. Some distortion can occur in the form of “compressing” the distance between objects.

Normal Lens - A lens where objects in the photo appear to be the same size as when seen by the naked eye. This lenses do not change your perceived distance from the subject.

Wide Angle Lens - A lens that shows a wider field of view than the naked eye. This is comparable to being further from the subject. Some distortion can occur (with a fisheye being an extreme example). Foreground objects appear disproportionately larger than background objects.

Macro Lens - A specialty lens that allows focusing on objects MUCH closer than with other lenses. Favored for all closeups (insects, flowers, etc).

Other Terms:

DOF - DOF stands for Depth-of-Field or Depth-of-focus. This describes how much of the shot is in focus (a plain perpendicular to the lens).

Focal Length - The size of a lens. Controls how “zoomed in” or “zoomed out” the picture is. On a 35mm camera a 50mm lens is pretty ‘normal’ and an 85mm lens is a short ‘telephoto’ and a 20mm lens is ‘wide.’ On a lower-end SLR a 50mm is a little bit telephoto.

Crop Factor - The ratio of size of the field of view between various cameras and compared against a 35mm film camera as the baseline. A typical digital SLR has a crop factor of 1.6 (meaning the field of view of the digital chip is smaller than a 35mm film frame). This affects the field of view offered by lenses. For example, a 50mm lens on a typical Digital SLR (DSLR) would be the equivalent of an 80mm lens on a 35mm film camera. A 200mm lens on a typical DSLR would be the same as a 320mm lens on a typical 35mm film camera.

Aperture - The aperture is the size of the opening of the shutter when it fires. It is measured as a fraction (so that 4.0 really means 1/4.0 and 16 means 1/16 and 1.8 means 1/1.8). The smaller the number, the wider the aperture. The wider the aperture, the smaller the DOF and the more light that gets in so the faster the shutter needs to be set.

Shutter Speed - How fast the shutter fires. Conventional wisdom dictates that a camera can be handheld at a shutter speed equal to 1/x where x is the focal length of the lens. For example, if shooting with a 100mm lens, you can handhold the camera up to 1/100 sec. Anything slower (1/50 sec, etc) would need to be balanced on a tripod or monopod or other stabilizer.

ISO - How sensitive the chip is to light. The higher the ISO, the faster the shutter can be set at. ISOs over 200 can start to introduce digital noise (comparable to film grain) with more noise coming from higher ISOs.

Exposure:

There are 3 major factors that affect proper exposure: ISO, Shutter Speed, and Aperture. Adjusting any of these factors affects exposure unless compensated for by either of the other settings.

For example, take the “sunny 16 rule.” The sunny 16 rule is a generalized rule of thumb for achieving proper exposure in sunny conditions. It states that you set the shutter speed to 1/ISO (ie - if using ISO 200 then set the shutter to 1/200 sec), then set the aperture to 1/16 (f-16 or f/16). So a proper exposure would be ISO 200, 1/200 sec, F/16.

Now if you wanted to change the shutter speed because you are using a 300mm lens and don’t have a tripod you could set the shutter to 1/400 sec. This would unbalance the above equation, so you could then compensate by raising the ISO to 400. Now you have ISO 400, 1/400 sec, F/16. Both this setting and the one above give the same exposure.

Depth of Field:

Depth of field is affected by two details: aperture and distance between the camera and the subject. Of these, aperture is the factor that gets manipulated most often when trying to change depth of field. The wider the aperture, the smaller the depth of field. When a lens is “wide open” (using the widest possible aperture, the smallest number) is has the smallest DOF. This is useful for blurring backgrounds and drawing focus where you want it. On the other hand, the smallest possible aperture (anywhere from F/16 on most lenses to F/22 or even F/45 on some lenses) gives the longest DOF. This is most useful in landscape photography where the ideal is to have ALL of the scene in focus.

Distance between camera and subject becomes an issue when shooting Macro photography specifically. When the lens is w/in mere inches from the subject then even a “normal” aperture like F/5.6 can yield a small DOF (a scant couple millimeters). To get all of a macro subject in focus it is usually necessary to shoot a F/8 or F/11 or smaller. This results in slow shutter speeds (see above) unless additional light is brought in (ie - from a flash). Slow shutter speeds increases the chance for motion blur (especially on a breezy day or when the subject is animate, ie a butterfly).

Yay, new thread. Another night, another study - I'm trying to be as strict as Pope at this.

2 lights setup, but I edited out the kicker because I didn't need it. Had to fucking rub crisco oil all over my face to get the damn water to bead.
Silver umbrella to the right, 1/2 power...

Rat - the only picture that is worth talking about is the Watercolor of Lagos - and it is a great fucking capture. You shoud should adjust the angle a little so the vertical of the building is vertical, but otherwise it is fantastic.

Rat - First pic is a relatively cliche kind of shot, which isn't inherently bad. In your case the shot feels heavy on the right hand side (more tree-silhouettes on the right plus the interesting ones, the palms, all lean to the right, plus the clouds move from thin on the left to thick on the right) I am not sure if you could have improved the composition by moving to the right some or not, but balance is a good concept to keep in mind while composing an image. Second pic is pretty, but having the horizon down the middle in this case isn't very useful visually. The sky is plain and boring but the ocean is textured and interesting; giving them equal weight doesn't benefit the picture in my opinion (but here opinions will probably vary). I also am not sure if I feel benefit from the panorama; if this is a crop it might be cool to see it uncropped (specifically if the crop cut off more ocean from the bottom). Is the third one a photo of a painting or a reflection in a puddle? If its the second, it's quite successful. My favorite of the bunch.

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needO (or a mod) - any chance of porting over the first post from the old thread? There's some good info in it for new photogs.

If you don't like using Photoshop, you might get a lot of enjoyment out of using a tool like Lightroom, which is focused more on basic photo improvements like noise reduction, white balance, clarity, shadows/highlights, and stuff like that. It's a great developing tool, and it's more for people like you (and me) who don't want to merge things together for surreal/unreal pictures.

Rat, I think the palm trees are ruined by the vegetation on either side. I tried cropping it a few different ways and wasn't satisfied. If you could get the palm trees alone with ample space on either side and made the crop so that it accentuated the tallness of the trees it would look better.

The boat is really difficult to see, it's swallowed up by the ocean. I think if you could make the boat more prominent in the photo it would look better. I like the position of the boat, with it to one side, but there's too much ocean and sky in the picture.

I like the third one and there's not much else to say about it.

pope, since I'm pretty experienced I don't know how DOF works in practice but is it possible to get more of the flower in focus while maintaining the blur in the background ? In the second picture the petal on the left, in the foreground, blurs towards the edge. The petals behind do as well but maybe that would cause more of the background to come into focus too?

Here's a photo of a katydid I snapped really quick one day on my porch. I loved the lighting, and it looks great for a photo shot with an iPhone (I know, I know). Mainly, I'm looking to turn this into a decent photo in terms of composition, but haven't been able to get a crop that does it justice. Any ideas?

I think the 2nd shot would actually look better without the water. The high-sheen of your skin adds a lot of definition to the shadows, but the water looks more like you've got a breakout of bumpy warts rather than perspiring or wet.

I literally know nothing about gewd photography, but from a pedestrian standpoint, needoptic, those photos look kind of-melodramatic? Not saying drama is strictly bad for photos, but the fade into black comes off as a bit too harsh to me. Were you going for an athletic look?

Really? I think it works for what you were doing. Good composition, lighting, exposure, etc. I actually like the sunglasses shot less. I'll agree with mensch that they're melodramatic, but I kinda figured that's what you were going for.

I literally know nothing about gewd photography, but from a pedestrian standpoint, needoptic, those photos look kind of-melodramatic? Not saying drama is strictly bad for photos, but the fade into black comes off as a bit too harsh to me. Were you going for an athletic look?

Spring is heeeerrreee! Maybe I can find something in this boring town to inspire me to take photos. Felt so blllaaahhh during the winter and on top of that my work blocked all the photo sites but flickr and I do most of my viewing of this thread at work!

Man, I love that one too. I've been playing Fallout 3 a lot lately and it gives me the same sort of lonely wilderness road vibe I get in the game.. Just with a lot more colour then the drabness of the game.

Annie! How are you? The monthly assignments died out due to lack of interest (even though I posted assignments, even I often didn't do them). Although Beavotron started a new-year's-resolution thread for a picture a day and I've been doing that. I think NeedOptic is doing a picture a day, too.

Ok, I tried doing some strobist BS on the rooftop today but my umbrella was flying around, the tripod had one leg screwed up so I have only 2 from the other previous days to post...

I'm not a giant fan of this but I certainly understand your umbrella woes. I don't even try and shoot with umbrellas outside unless i have people standing there holding them. So I try and use small home made softboxes or grids which don't catch the wind as easily. Both of my umbrellas have damage to them from falling over in the wind even when I throw sand bags on them for extra weight.

Salti: What was the setup like for that one? It looks pretty good.

Jake: I want to comment on your photos but its really late and i shall do so at another time when I can give more time to the post.

I don't think it really counts as a centered horizon. There's like one point total where the actual visual horizon is vertically centered (at the middle of the pic) but since it's all hills the horizon moves away from the center in both directions from the middle. And there aren't any other horizontal lines at the vertical center of the image. It feels more fluidly balanced than, say, a seascape that has a centered horizon.

PS - love the shot!

@ Jake - cheers. I tried a few shots to get a better comp, but that was the best I could do at the time. I might try again with better light and my real tripod (not my semi-flimsy gorillapod). My wife bought me the plant on a whim - yay! It's an echevaria that tends toward the pink, possibly the "perle von nuremberg" species.

nO: nice, but the droplets are almost too much. Not digging the second one at all, sorry!

rat: love the last one, it's a step or two above the others you posted

Madame Laycock band shots;

The last of Scotland;

Some shots from an exhibition opening last night;

So the first set of photos with the band each individual has crazy costume/makeup but the background seems rather plain and mundane. This can work sometimes when you really make some juxtaposition like high fashion model in a broken down building, but here it just looks like you couldn't find a good enough location. Assuming the last person is actually the singer of the band then the pose for it is awesome and it really shows they are the singer when compared with the other two people. In the first photo the softbox refelction off the goggles is really distracting because you can't see the man's eye.

The second set of photos from Scotland use really great leading lines in the first two photos. The first two work because of this and because they are so clean. The first one has the shore curved line leading right to the boat and the second one has both the road and the curved hills/mountians acting as leading lines. The third one on the other hand doesn't really have much interesting in it. The lake the person is overlooking doesn't look spectacular in any way. The foreground is cluttered with ugly shrubs.

The third set I like the last two photos. The first photo is decent at documenting people coming into the exhibit but thats about as far as it goes. The second photo is awesome because of the color and the odd space. The last one has a really cool subject. It seems odd having the art piece in the middle and so much negative space but when playing with crops on it I couldn't seem to find a better crop because you lose leading lines if you cut off the left wall or the ceiling.